Geography Lessons
by Anna Nigma
Summary: Because it's not just a river in Egypt. Ryoma/Sakuno in 50 prompts. Rated for safety.


**Disclaimer: I still don't play tennis, I still can't draw, and I'm still not a Japanese man. Logically, this manga is still not mine.**

**A/N: My PoT muse was missing RyoSaku so I decided to feed it with this. **

**Love goes out to my beta, strawberry ponta-chan!**

_It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept._

_Bill Watterson _

**Air**

He doesn't_need_ her. Not like he needs air or food or water. He can live without her.

He just doesn't _want_ to, is all.

**Apples**

Her hair ties have little apples on the ends and they've been clinking together all day.

It's driving. Him. Insane.

He snaps in the middle of lunch. It's in that moment, staring down at her, braids unraveling over slim shoulders, brown eyes wide, soft mouth in a tiny, surprised O that he realizes:

He's screwed.

**Beginning**

Sometimes, when he's almost insane with wanting her and not having her and fearing he never will, he longs for the days when he couldn't even remember her name.

**Bugs**

Sakuno _likes_ Ryoma until they are fourteen.

She falls in _love_ with him the day she sees him gently deposit a spider outside instead of just squashing it.

**Coffee**

Sakuno is the only person who can make coffee just the way he likes it. Even he can't get it quite right.

So, it's obvious that she should move in with him.

It just makes sense.

**Dark**

He tries not to think of her when it's dark and he's alone.

He rarely succeeds.

**Despair**

She is seventeen when she's finally gives up on her hope that, given enough time, Ryoma will develop normal social skills. He lives in his own world and isn't looking to emigrate.

She sighs once, shakes her head, and learns to speak the language.

**Doors**

"You're going to hurt yourself if you keep turning your head at that angle."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"We can trade seats if you want. I have a better view of the door."

"Whatever."

"I'm just saying. If you keep jerking your head around every time the door opens you're going to pull something and then Tezuka will be angry. We don't want that. I'm just looking out for your interests."

Fuji grinned cheerfully at the scowling boy sitting across from him. He really shouldn't tease the kid so much but Ryoma in love was the funniest thing he'd seen since Yuuta had first started dating An-chan.

**Drink**

She knew he loved her when he gave up the last Ponta (his favorite flavor!) without prompting.

She hadn't even mentioned being thirsty.

**Duty**

It wasn't like he _wanted_ to be here. Seriously. This was a waste of his time. He was _famous_. He had better things to do than teach his former coach's clumsy granddaughter to play tennis.

And so, yeah, it wasn't like anyone specifically said he _had _to be the one to teach her. But those other guys were idiots, volunteering to teach when they couldn't even take a point from him. They sucked.

And Ryuuzaki already sucked enough. She didn't need those losers making her worse. Her tennis was so bad that it was practically his civic duty to help her. She was a danger to herself and others. He was a _hero_.

I mean, it wasn't like he _wanted_ to be here.

**Earth**

He travels all over the world but he always ends up back in Japan.

It's where she is.

**End**

Ryoma always has a goal. He wonders sometimes when his stopped being about tennis and became her.

**Fall**

Ryoma had never considered himself a clumsy guy. But now, falling in love with her, scrambling for any hint of how he ever got to this point, he figures he must be.

He _must_ have tripped because he sure as hell didn't do this on purpose.

**Fire**

Ryoma has the fireplace removed before she ever sets foot in their first home. She doesn't even know it's there.

He thinks it's probably better that way.

**Flexible**

"I've been working on my flexibility like you said."

He took her in. Shy smile. Short skirt. Full split.

.

.

.

He'd missed Japan.

**Flying**

He misses the days when his dreams were about flying rather than about her.

At least back then he could look her in the eye.

**Food**

He's come to associate her with food. It's not surprising, really. She's been bringing him bentos for years and she bakes things for the team and her class and pretty much everyone else she knows. So it's really not surprising.

And that's _obviously_ why his stomach acts weird every time he sees her. Or thinks about her. Or—

He's a shit liar. Even when it's to himself.

**Foot**

If Ryoma doesn't say more than three words during her first dinner with his family it's only because she keeps rubbing her absurdly tiny feet up and down his legs.

**Grave**

Ryoma stared down at the large, grey stone in front of him, at his girlfriend kneeling in front of it, small and proud and sad.

It wasn't how he'd imagined meeting her parents.

**Green**

Watching her turn red over someone who isn't him makes him positively green with envy.

And nausea.

**Head**

He'd figured it out. Three years of wondering. Three years of puzzling. Three years of mystified speculation and he'd finally figured it out.

It was the braids.

They were unbalancing her, throwing her entire body off center. That was the reason for all the stumbling and tripping and falling. He had to tell her. If she just got . . . rid . . . of . . . them . . .

It wasn't the braids. It definitely wasn't the braids.

No need to be hasty.

**Hollow**

He's won. Thousands fans are screaming his name. It's a beautiful day. He should be happy.

He's not.

She isn't here and nothing can make up for that.

**Hope**

She'd been ready to give up. After five years as his fan and friend with no sign of ever being anything else she had decided to give up. She didn't make a fuss or go out of her way to avoid him. She didn't stop going to games or cheering, not entirely at least. She just bowed out quietly, gracefully, silently.

After the third time she missed a game he showed up outside her house and demanded an explanation. He was still in his uniform. She could tell he hadn't showered.

The next morning she woke up early and packed him a bento.

**Honor**

He hates award ceremonies, fancy dinners, and anything held in his honor but Sakuno loves to get dressed up and he loves what happens _after_ she's been dressed up.

So they go.

**Light**

It's not like it's hard. She's tiny, almost worryingly so. He really doesn't see what the big deal is.

It's just . . . faster to carry her than to let her stumble around on her own.

**Lost**

He holds her hand the entire time they're in Kyushu. Everyone thinks it's adorable.

Ryoma thinks it's more practical and less creepy than a leash.

**Metal**

Ryoma knows, better than anyone else, that beneath the layers of shy, girlish charm and gentle, restful innocence is a spine made out of solid steel. Once she figures it out she'll be a force to be reckoned with.

He can't _wait_.

**Old**

Ryoma was not a fan of change . . .

**New**

. . . but eventually it just made more sense to lean over and kiss her than it did to sit around wishing he could.

**Peace**

She was annoying. Bouncing around all over the stands with her stupid, soft hair and her stupid, shiny eyes, in her stupid little dress, flashing her stupidly long legs all over the place, making a nuisance of herself. Destroying his concentration.

He wished she would just go home.

(Except he didn't. Not really.)

**Poison**

Pounding heart. Dizziness. Dry mouth. Nausea.

She'd definitely poisoned him.

Airborne, probably. He bet she'd hidden in the folds of her ridiculously tiny cheerleading outfit.

He hated that thing.

Seriously.

**Pretty**

Pretty. He'd called her _pretty_. To her face? No. Unprompted? Not really. Grudgingly? You bet.

But he'd said it.

And that was something.

**Rain**

Ryoma scowled at the scene playing out in front of him. Why was she even talking to that guy?

Momo snickered beside him. "It could be worse."

Ryoma didn't see how. She was _giggling_. He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Momo shrugged. "It could be raining?"

Five minutes later it started raining. She was wearing a white shirt. Momo was right.

It was worse.

**Regret**

His biggest regret is that he was too stupid to notice her until he was sixteen. Hers is the two weeks she dated Horio in middle school.

Ryoma doesn't know about that. If he did his biggest regret would be not letting Horio get eaten by that bear.

**Roses**

In all their years together he never brings her roses.

She prefers sunflowers.

**Secret**

When he's fourteen he punches Horio in the nose in the middle of the public courts seemingly without provocation.

He makes up some bullshit excuse about being in a bad mood and no one's willing to question him after seeing him lay out one of his oldest friends for doing nothing worse than going through his tennis bag.

(It's more panic than anger. Horio is in the process of unzipping the compartment that contains the two items he never plays without: the tennis ball she gave him before he left for the U.S. Open and the picture of the two of them Kawamura's sushi place.)

**Snakes**

In their first year of high school Sakuno begins spending (what seems to him) an inordinate amount of time talking to Kaidoh. The older boy finds himself the target of a rather disturbing number of "stray" balls during practice that no one ever seems to see thrown.

Oddly enough the phenomenon ceases shortly after he asks Sakuno's Loud Friend out on their first date.

Sakuno thinks it was the universe telling him to get a move on.

Ryoma thinks that the Viper should work on making his intentions more clear.

Because really, with the way he was acting, someone could have gotten the wrong idea.

**Snow**

Every year during the first snow she makes snow angels in the yard. He never goes.

He's already got one angel in his life and she's more than enough.

**Solid**

They aren't the most romantic couple in the world. They don't go out very often and rarely engage in PDA. They aren't particularly dramatic, neither of them is big on grand gestures or theatrics. Neither of them ever remembers their anniversary.

But she keeps him grounded and he makes her believe in the impossible.

It works out.

**Spring**

It's not that he misses her. She's only been gone for two days. Losing sleep because he hasn't seen her for two days would be pathetic.

Echizen Ryoma is _not _pathetic.

It's just that he needs a new mattress. There's a spring digging into hisback.

**Stable**

She's the most uncoordinated person he knows but he hands his heart over to her anyway.

**Strange**

He never stops thinking she's strange.

Normal is overrated, anyway.

**Summer**

Summer is both Ryoma's favorite and least favorite season.

It's his favorite because Sakuno looks really good in a bikini.

It's his least favorite because Sakuno looks _really _good in a bikini.

**Taboo**

"And I know you aren't stupid enough to believe you could get away with dating my adorable granddaughter, right?"

." . . Right."

"But if you_ were_ you'd do the honorable thing and tell me, wouldn't you?"

". . . I would."

"And you would never, _ever _think of going behind my back and forcing my poor innocent little girl to _lie_ to her darling grandmother, would you?"

". . . No."

"And if you _were_ dating her you'd know better than to ever even _think_ about doing anything to hurt her, wouldn't you?"

"Of course."

Ryoma knows better than to hesitate when it really counts.

**Ugly**

The only time he's ever wished Sakuno was even slightly less cute was the day he finally introduced her to his father.

Pervert.

**War**

Ryoma was used to competition. When you were the best everyone and their grandmother wanted to take you on. He was used to it. It didn't bother him.

But that was tennis.

This? This was _war_.

Fuji-senpai and his stupid lunch dates were going _down. _

**Water**

He doesn't understand what's so funny about their report.

It's just a stupid river.

**Welcome**

He never feels like he's properly home until he's had to bail her out of trouble at least once.

**Winter**

Ryoma hates winter. Sakuno loves it.

She loves the snow and the sleet and the chill. She loves the holidays and the activities and doesn't even mind the extra chores.

She _loves_ the cold.

After listening to him complain about it for what has to be the ninetieth time, Momo shrugs irritably.

"I don't know why you're so surprised," he snaps. "She likes _you._"

. . . It kind of makes sense, actually.

**Wood**

They've been dating for six years and living together for two when he informs her, very casually, that she's going to marry him. They are lost in an unfamiliar city, sitting on a crowded bus that smells like feet. It's raining outside. She's hungry.

She lays her hand against his cheek and smiles at him fondly.

Dumb as a post.

He's luck he's cute or she'd have shot him years ago.

**A/N: Ryoma is so much fun to write. I think it's because he's so socially stunted . . . **

**Anyhoo, reviews are loved, worshipped, and adored. **


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